Product Description
In a time of unprecedented competition for audience attention and with an increasing demand for complex graphics, Visual Language for Designers clarifies how to achieve quick and effective communications. It presents ways to design for the strengths of our innate mental capacities and to compensate for our cognitive limitations.
Includes:
- How to organize graphics for quick perception
- How to direct the eyes to essential information
- How to use visual shorthand for efficient communication
- How to make abstract thoughts concrete
- How to best express visual complexity
- How to charge a graphic with energy and emotion
Visual Language for Designers: Principles for Making Graphics that People Know
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After getting this book I was initially surprised and pleased in its presentation starting with it’s cover and size, but it went downhill from there – well written but, for some reason after paging/reading through the book I only found a few of the graphic images to be above average, nothing outstanding. I cannot place my finger on it but I found that the images while somewhat supporting the text were not inspiring in them selves and in fact quite dull. Using others work to support the thoughts in the text is a excellent thought, but only after an original presentation by the author is made. I suspect that maybe they ‘talked’ and appealed to the author or why use them so they maybe reflect her sense of artistic appeal. I’m thinking of returning it as it is not compelling. I gave it 3 stars for it’s written content and attempt to provide supporting graphics associations but, for a graphics book, it is just not inspiring or well done in a graphics sense. Maybe they came from one of those $5.00 CD collections of art. There are better books out there, Presentation Zen Design: Simple Design Principles and Techniques to Enhance Your Presentations comes to mind. Curious too that the cover design was not done by the author, and maybe the design of the book according to the credits.
After doing this review I re-read some of the other reviews and it dawned on me that some of these may have been done by the same person – too similar both in content and word use. Highly suspicious IMHO.
Update – After working with the book I have lowered my rating – the graphics are outdated and not really connected to the point. It is like an art history professor trying to teach elements of design by what he/she thinks the artist had in mind with no conversation with the artist. Save your money – much better stuff out there.
Rating: 2 / 5
The most striking thing about this book is the collection of images. HUNDREDS of images, incredible, eye-catching, fascinating examples of effective ways to communicate information visually. Most pages have at least 2-3 large images, with detailed captions, to illustrate the principles in the text. It looks and feels like a gorgeous coffee table book (and more fun to flip through!), huge and glossy, even though it has way more informative content than a coffee table book. Kudos to the author for finding so many brilliant examples of the things she writes about, from both the U.S. and around the world — if a picture is worth a thousand words, then this book is a treasure trove!
As an educational tool for students and professionals, the information in this book is a wonderful, clear summary of the smartest information in the field. Even for someone who is not a designer, the book is fascinating to browse through, and there’s so much to be learned. An incredible book!
Rating: 5 / 5
This book is incredible. First of all, it’s large and perfectly printed, in full color, on fantastic paper — not very many publishers will spend that kind of money these days. It is full of lush visual design examples with explanations of the principle that each graphic is demonstrating. The author knows visual design as well as psychology and the book has a lot of depth. She clarifies and then demonstrates principles such as mental models, schema, proximity and grouping and much more. If you design, interpret, analyze or are just fascinated by what makes a visual well designed, this is a must get book.
Rating: 5 / 5
This is one of the best books around on applying (perceptual/cognitive/research) psychological principals to graphics and visualizations. This book really stands out for three reasons, it’s concise (but not overly brief) discussion of relevant psychology (memory/cognition/perception) plus the incredible examples for graphic designers and the set of references. The closest competitors are books by Few Now You See It: Simple Visualization Techniques for Quantitative Analysis (which covers similar psych issues but is horribly wordy) or Information Dashboard Design: The Effective Visual Communication of Data (which reads well but focuses more on clean scientific graphs) or the well-known books by Tufte . Relative to other books, this one has a fantastic deal more information on how to integrate art with information. After the book you will see graphics and reckon about how a designer could have done a better job in guiding the reader’s eye to the intended information in a poster or how to design a better handout showing a process like how part of the body works or how to place together a complicated device. The graphics in the book REALLY stand out and support the authors writing. As a researcher I despise to see people state “facts” or “hypotheses” about how people reckon without providing supporting evidence. This book has a very respectable set of references. So, rather than pontificating about the “right” way to do graphics there are references to relevant (experimental psych) articles.
Basically, this book is the complete package. It could be a fantastic coffee table book or on a shelf in a scientific library.
Rating: 5 / 5
I bought this with the thought of it being based on recent neurological and psychological discoveries in visual perception. It has a bit of that and lots of pictures that do not clearly illustrate how those discoveries impact design that communicates.
As for the design examples, hardly original and exciting. Another example that we have not come that far from the halcyon days of graphic design in the 1960’s.
Rating: 3 / 5